Friday, April 9, 2010

I've Gone Outta Style

I know there's better rips of this tape out there-- not to mention last year's re-issue from the same label that puts out shitty Yeasayer records-- but I'm going to post it anyway because I own it and I feel like listening to it again. I bought this at Brass City Records in '84/'85, back when it first came out, and I think the main reason why I still have it when most of the vinyl I bought in those same two years is long gone is because stores generally aren't interested in letting you trade in old tapes, so unlike the records it made more sense just to keep it.

Not that this isn't a great tape, of course; in fact, there weren't too many other releases I owned back then that screamed "punk rock" better than this one. The Zero Boys were one of the first U.S. hardcore/punk bands to have really solid, meaty-sounding recordings, so while a lot of the other better-known bands at the time were putting out records that sounded relatively tame (I'm dumbfounded that there are people who claim to like Circle Jerks "Wild In The Streets" and the first Fear LP), the Zero Boys were practically made to be blasted out of a set of car speakers with the windows down. I used to carry a bag of tapes with me whenever I'd take the train to New York or Boston to see shows, and one day in particular I was riding through Boston in Al Quint's car with a punk rock friend of his who was from Europe but wanted to hear something American (since I guess U.S. punk rock was pretty scarce where he was from), so we put my copy of "History Of" in the cassette player and cranked it up. Nothing sounded more like good ol' American punk rock to me.

Throughout the late '70s/very early '80s it wasn't unusual for bands to start out playing slower early in their careers and then begin to veer towards faster tempos (after '81 or '82) once hardcore started to catch on, which is kinda funny since it's sorta the reverse of what bands do now. You can hear Zero Boys doing the same thing on this tape; some of the songs on the second side are pratically full-bore thrash, but it's still their chunky mid-tempo stuff that I think kicks ass the most. Another thing that's kinda funny in a reverse sort of way is the tape's packaging-- the address of the record label was rubber-stamped onto the sleeve, with the title hand-written on the spine in ballpoint pen, and the cassette labels were hand-colored using crayola markers on both sides-- which was probably a low-budget necessity at the time, but nowadays would be considered ultra-rare and limited edition, of course.

Any Datura Seeds, dave? The album is fantastic, but I may be one of the few Mahernaphiles owning a cassette copy of their unreleased '92 demo. (other than the copies I burned for everyone in 76% and Bad Dream House).

The thought crossed my mind, too, how he gets away with billing himself as The Lemonheads (when it's just him and a couple of mystery guys) instead of just Evan Dando solo. What the frig's the difference, the same people are gonna buy tickets anyway.

The mp3 files on this post are now listen-only (non-downloadable) files. They're now being hosted on my Vox page, along with the 7 other tracks that I ripped from the tape. (click on any of the listen-only links in the post to access the Vox page)

Some sort of announcement for 2017 or something

What about me

For the record, I have not only lost my ability to take a joke, but I can also no longer sense danger, communicate with sea animals, see through walls, transform myself into a bucket of water or block of ice, burn a batter's bat to ashes with my fastball, fly an invisible plane, nor start fires and cause seismic waves using only mind control.

Ad policy

The labels that have enough money to buy advertising all put out shitty records

Review policy

If you sent me something I must've lost it

How to use this blog

You can browse this blog and listen to the songs without having to download them first, by clicking on the highlighted song titles. The files will open in a new window; you can either hit "Play", or you can click on "Download" up in the right-hand corner to download them to your computer, which is the preferred method, because there's usually a cool graphic (or sometimes even lyrics) when you play the files using Windows Media Player.

Also, clicking on the photos will enlarged them. I guess some people haven't figured that out yet.

Archive

Bad Writing

"Within a grainy film-still between a summer sunset and the end of times lies the post-punk squall of Weekend. Weekend filter the aggression, tempo and sneer of punk through a wall of reverb, haunting melody, feedback and primitive garage guitar.... a totally distinctive take on the history of post-punk noise rock."

Recent awesome-like stuff from those other blogs

fucking nothing, can you believe that. blogs are dead

This blog was originally intended to be a place for me to write about the records in my collection, regardless of their rarity/collectability-- or, at least, it was when I first started. Lately it's just been an excuse for me to make dumb jokes and spout off about a lot of stupid crap. Sometimes different things will be thrown in along the way just to confuse people and piss them off, which is okay. All screw-ups, wrong dates, and mis-statements will be ignored by me as if they were intentional, except for grammatical errors which will be edited and rewritten at least five or six times if necessary. Facts will often be misrepresented, as a way of mocking those people who think such things are important. Please note: This is just a hobby for me, and bands are written about here either because I own one of their records or because I've seen them play before and like them. Posting press releases for crappy bands that I have no use for is not really how I want to spend my spare time. If you want to know what kind of bands I like, just look at the sidebar to see which bands I've written about already, and you'll notice that your PR firm doesn't represent any of them. Most of the live band photos on this blog are mine, and if there's one of your band that you like then please feel free to use it, I don't care. It's your band anyway. The blog title itself was swiped from Paul Caporino-- "One Base on an Overthrow" was originally going to be the title of a M.O.T.O. record that I was going to release back in the '90s, but that never actually happened. Lucky for you, I guess.